T writes: Have you had any experience with the bears and the fermented compost? Are they attracted to it? I live in West Vancouver and would like to order some dry bokashi mix but was wondering about the bears when I go to bury the fermented food scraps.

All I can say with certainty is that the deeper you bury the fermented food scraps, less smell will percolate above ground. It is my opinion that bokashi compost does not smell like normal rotting food waste so it is less attractive to animals that may want to eat it.

A few years ago, I put a large quantity of bokashi prepared food waste on a raised garden bed and covered it with straw. Purposely, I left one corner exposed and waited to see what would happen. Wasps and flies were around but never landed on it.

I save organic waste for a friend who has a community garden plot. As I live in very small studio apartment with no cross-ventilation, the odour can be fairly overpowering every time I lift the lid of the ice-cream pail containing the potential compost.

A friend gave me a sample of your [Bokashi] product, and it made an immediate difference to the strength (and quality) of the offensive smell. I can now continue to save this material for my friend during the summer months, rather than stopping until the cold strikes again.

I got your site from one of your customers. I want to set up a composting system on our deck here, but want to make sure that it doesn’t have flies, and that it works on a balcony.

We have a staff of about 60, so we produce a fair amount of compost.

What can you do to help set us up properly over here. Keep in mind, we are a non-profit.

A collection bucket in the kitchen can hold the food waste until it is full. At that point, it can be placed in 5 – 6 gallon plastic pail [HDPE 2] and bokashi sprinkled on top. This will start the fermentation process and keep the flies and smells down as more material is added. A 5 – 6 gallon pail will fill up in about 7 – 10 days. Bokashi can be added to the kitchen collection bucket as well.

When the 5 gallon bucket is full, it needs to sit for about 10 – 14 days to finish fermenting. At that point it can be added to a composting system for finishing.

The biggest challenge will be processing all the collected bokashi compost material. If you have the space, it can be done but it may work just as well to give some of the full buckets to your staff to process in their own compost bins at home. One of my customers, the AIBC office http://www.aibc.ca , does that now.

We started using bokashi to help control the fruit flies in our small compost collection in our office/warehouse. The bokashi has worked perfectly and exactly as we had hoped for that purpose. We definitely saw an immediate and significant reduction in the fruit flies due to the bokashi and they are virtually non existent now (when we stay on top of adding the bokashi). As an added bonus the compost is also way less smelly now. We will continue to use bokashi and strongly recommend it to anyone who is composting in a work and home situation.

Within twelve hours of responding to a blog post about the same topic, I received this email:

I’m trying to find out if chicken bones are okay in my bokashi bucket (hope so cause I already put them in). You said chicken is fine, so how about the bones?…If bones are not okay, should I go to the trouble to dig them out? How should I best compost bones?

If everything is smelling of fermenting, then you are doing the right things.

But fermentation is not composting. The food wastes added to your bokashi bucket may not look much different than when they went in. but their chemical structure has change completely.

It is when your bokashi food waste goes into your compost heap that the real composting begins. Bones do take longer to break down but in my experience, they become soft and pliable after several weeks/months in the compost.

Will they disappear? Eventually. If you want to make that happen faster, the best thing I can suggest is to break the bones into smaller pieces when you put them in your bokashi bucket.

This is a whole new marketing dynamic. Previous years, I parked my bicycle outside

the market area, displayed my bokashi kits and arranged to meet with people later in the week. The inner cynic in me says that officials at YLFMS – who are all great people – let me have a booth to keep me from going there on the days that I’m not inside. I don’t mind at all!

In the past month, I have acquired a tent for my booth, a banner, folding tables, decorative items for displaying my wares, new printed materials, arranged Car Co-op vehicle use etc. The biggest challenge is trying to determine how much stock to bring. I don’t want to run out before the final bell goes. This week, I’m bringing it all!

I already have commitments for orders this Sunday. That’s a nice feeling.

So watch this space for updates. I can’t live blog my first day, but I’ll try to make notes as I go along and post it in the evening along with some pictures.

One more thing: Letting me know in advance that you are coming to purchase my products on the market days would be greatly appreciated. That way, I can hold items aside for you until you arrive.

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If you are in the Vancouver network on Facebook you can join the Farmers Market group page here and their fan page here.

If you want to grow food successfully in containers, nurturing soil life can make a huge difference. Worm compost, for example, is full of microbes and life. Add it to your containers and you will get more vigorous growth, and far fewer pest and disease problems. Discovering this, was the biggest turning point in my growing (more important, even, than self watering containers), transforming sporadic successes into something more consistent.

Why is soil life important?

Healthy organic soil in the natural world supports a web of life including bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes as well as larger creatures like worms and slugs. These organisms play a vital role in the life of plants. They break down organic matter to make the nutrients available for plant roots. They condition the soil and create air spaces and tunnels in it – improving aeration and drainage. And they compete with other more harmful organisms in the soil, ones that will damage your plants if left unchecked.

Soil life is complex – so the above is just my attempt to summarise some of the main benefits you can expect when you add life to your containers!

Why do you need to add life to containers?

Most commercial composts that we buy are sterilised and low in microbial life. So is municipal compost (it has to be made at hot temperatures to kill pathogens, killing much of the beneficial life, too). So if you want life in your containers – and to mimic soil in the natural world – you need to add it.

1. Worm compost

2. Homemade compost

3. Leaf mould

4. Manure

5. Bokashi

Bokashi is Japanese method of composting food quickly in a tightly sealed bucket. Benefits of bokashi are that you can add almost any food (even meat), it works quickly, can be done in a very small space, and doesn’t smell (much). The drawbacks are that you need to buy bokashi bran for it to work, and the pickled product is not as versatile as worm compost. But you can add it to the bottom of containers to add both organic matter and microorganisms.

Mix about 10 – 20% into the compost in the bottom third of a container.